Tag Archives: random_alex

I am loving the Tumblr “A Doctor World” which remixes the odd, philosophical phrases of the art-tragicomic-musing-on-the-universe comic strip A Softer World with images from Doctor Who. These range from funny and romantic to sad and uncomfortable – wonderful stuff.

Tehani and Random Alex are doing a chronological read-along series of posts about Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga – Tehani, like me, is a diehard Bujold fan, and Alex is reading the books (and loving them) for the very first time. I’m excited to follow along! Two posts up so far, Cordelia’s Honor and The Warrior’s Apprentice. NOBODY SPOIL ALEX.

The SF MindMeld, which hasn’t had a brilliant record at addressing gender parity in the past but I believe has been working to improve, reiterates Griffith’s idea of the Russ Pledge and asks What’s The Importance of the Russ Pledge Today? Sadly, while most of the official respondents have the right idea and some interesting things to say, there are many commenters who seem offended at the very concept of giving women writers a fair go.

A cool piece about the equal male-female balance on the writing team of TV show Community and how it worked out really well for them, though starting as an experiment imposed upon them. While there’s a little bit of ‘wow, we included women writers and they didn’t suck, and actually it meant we had a team that had a wider range of views!’ and I think there is some belittling of the idea that a good racial mix among writers would be just as important, it still feels like a step in the right direction.

“Thinking too hard” about The Hunger Games, why the concept of the first book worked so well, and the subversive message it gives to teens, which goes beyond “be yourself” all the way to “if you have to pretend not to be yourself to anyone, chances are they are out to kill you.”

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The Chronos Awards were presented this weekend at Continuum 7! I really wish I could have been at the con.

* Best Long Fiction: Madigan Mine, Kirstyn McDermott (Pan MacMillan Australia)
AKA book teetering at the highest point of my to read pile and piling scorn upon me for not reading it yet, with every new accolade it gathers. Yay Kirstyn! * Best Short Fiction: “Her Gallant Needs”, Paul Haines (Sprawl,Twelfth Planet Press)
As with most Haines stories, I both loved and hated this one in equal measures. Yay for Paul and for Sprawl, a fabulous book.* Best Artwork: Australis Imaginarium cover, Shaun Tan (FableCroft Publishing)
Nice to see Shaun Tan continue his run of awards, large and small, in 2011… and extra hoorays for Tehani, who commissioned this cover for one of the flagship books of her new press, Fablecroft.* Best Fan Writer: Alexandra Pierce* Best Fan Written Work: “Review: The Secret Feminist Cabal by Helen Merrick”, Alexandra Pierce
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Having followed the awards on Twitter, I only just got that Alex in fact took out two awards here. Some of us have known for some time what a smart & committed book reviewer our Random Alex is, and it’s beyond awesome to have her acknowledged by the wider community. And in her home town, no less! * Best Fan Artwork: Continuum 6 Props, Rachel Holkner
Hooray for Rachel! She has been so committed over the last several years to making interesting fan art in conjunction with the Continuum conventions. * Best Fan Publication: Live Boxcutters Doctor Who at AussieCon IV, Josh Kinal and John Richards
Congrats to Boxcutters! I am genuinely happy about this – while Galactic Suburbia was nominated in the same category, thanks to being 1/3 Melbournite, and it would have been cool to have awards from two different states after picking up the Tin Duck, the Live Boxcutters event was just such a highlight of Aussiecon, that I am utterly delighted for Josh and John. Being in that audience was exciting and exhilarating, and I’m sad that I will miss their contributions to Continuum’s programming this year.* Best Achievement: Programming: AussieCon IV, Sue Ann Barber and Grant Watson
Again, losing gracefully here, as the Snapshot was up in this category – and again, it would have been lovely to win for that, though Kathryn’s crazy amounts of work and commitment to running that project (and the rest of us for participating in that high velocity fortnight or so) was already honoured by a trophy at the Ditmars. But it’s awesome to see Sue Ann and Grant honoured for the huge amount of work they had to take on at Aussiecon 4, in many cases at the very last minute, to make that event happen. So hooray.

Hooray for everyone! Hope there were some gorgeous frocks at the ceremony.

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Yes, it’s true, we have a podcast. Alisa (aka girliejones) , random_alex and myself have been talking for quite a while about doing this. Our ears pricked up when the Sofanauts (BRILLIANT podcast) died. We considered volunteering to take over that particular podcast, but then figured that something we did would end up so different, it might be better to be our own thing from the start.

It’s basically the three of us chatting, about what’s going on in the spec fic world, what we’ve been reading, and other topics of interest. An excuse to chat on Skype once a fortnight with two people I love to talk to! How awesome is that?

The title came from all the reading of and about Joanna Russ we’ve been doing lately – it was a term used to deride the science fiction women wrote which was a bit too feminine in subject as well as style. All three of us are researching/reading about feminist SF right now, and while that isn’t directly the theme of the podcast… who are we kidding? It’s us. There’s going to be feminist discussion in there along with the spaceships and flash fiction rants.

Warning: episode one of Galactic Suburbia does not contain a flash fiction rant. I suspect this will not be typical.

Anyway, my honey Aifin offered to produce, and we finally found a night we can all talk to each other (only a 3 hour time difference but so tricky to juggle that and children’s bedtimes!). It’s a bit rough around the edges as to be expected for a first ep (I listened to episode one of my beloved Radio Free Skaro to inspire me beforehand, and it was really, really bad) but we are planning to do one of these every fortnight so I expect a steep learning curve.